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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23643553">12 Ways Apocalypse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae'>Callmesalticidae</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wasserson/pseuds/shadow_wasserson'>shadow_wasserson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Gods Have Horns [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AI, Alien Worlds, Alternate Universe - Gods &amp; Goddesses, Apocalypse, Be Careful What You Wish For, Blood, Body Modification, Corpses, Crossroads Deals &amp; Demons, Drabble Series, Gambling, Gen, Genocide, Godstuck, Grey goo, Hanging, Hangover, Heartbreak, Mind Honey, Not with a bang but with a whimper, Nuclear War, Nudity, Orbital Bombardment, Plague, Suicide, Trolls are Gods (Homestuck), War, red giant sun, the sun is gone, void, war council</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:14:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23643553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_wasserson/pseuds/shadow_wasserson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gods of the Zodiac have all had reasons to destroy the world. Good thing there's worlds to spare.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Gods Have Horns [13]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/202529</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Fire and Brimstone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Yep, we're back.</p><p>None of the worlds described - and destroyed - herein are Earth.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Eridan Ampora</b> is pissed off.</p><p>This religion, this cult, had been festering on the surface of this world for some time. They thought that they could please the gods by becoming godlike, physically. Staining and tattooing their skin, implanting inert metal horns, stretching, cutting, suctioning, stitching. It was one thing when they were doing it willingly, but these little shits were kidnapping others and modifying <em>them </em>too, a forced induction. They were just annoying at first, but now that they'd moved off-planet they were becoming a serious pain.</p><p>It wouldn't have bothered him at all, if it wasn't all being done in his name.</p><p>So now, Eridan stands at the front of his ship, in front of a great clear viewport over their homeworld, resplendent and glittering below. In front of him stand the various leaders of the world's religion, cowering in postures of submission. He's letting them have it.</p><p>"Disgustin'," he snaps. "Your utter ignorance, your callous disregard for truth. Anythin' for power, anythin'!" Eridan takes a deep breath. "You want to be like us? You are closer than you think. I've been there. I've been just like you. Does that make you happy?"</p><p>The god bares his fangs in a cruel smile. "Would you like to know how to be more like us? To act as we act? To feel as we feel?"</p><p>One of the cult leaders dares to speak, voice slurring around artificially-sharpened teeth. "Please, please, Prince, mercy! We only wanted redemption..."</p><p>"Well then, come here. Look. The fire a' Truth will redeem you." Eridan raises his staff and gestures towards the viewport. They turn to look, and as they do, the orbital bombardment begins.</p><p>They cry out, fall to their knees, stare in mute horror. Unbelieving as their world, their kingdom of lies, their grand vista of of pointless temples and monuments to hubris, is reduced to slag by the Prince's armada.</p><p>"This is the truth," says the Prince, voice cold and distant. "Your lies will always destroy you, and all you love. One way or another."</p><p>The planet blazes. The planet burns.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Shit, Let's Be Buddha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Tavros Nitram</b> means well. It seems to him that most of the worst suffering in life comes from wanting things that are impossible to have. Wanting is constant, all across the universe. He's seen it over and over. Wanting a better life, a happier life, a more fulfilled life. Wanting more power, more status, more resources. Wanting printing presses and pasteurized food, telecommunications and tropical vacations, 3-D printers and microwave dinners. Wanting perfect control over one's life.</p>
<p>It was impossible. The constant want never ended, was never satisfied. Fulfillment, by definition, by biology itself, was left eternally out of reach.</p>
<p>If people could just be satisfied with simplicity, and not constantly want more and better, then they would be free of so much stress and fear. Tavros likes being free of things. He can't imagine why anyone else would feel otherwise.</p>
<p>One day, he tries to give a world this simplicity. It has to be the whole world, or else those still gripped by desire will destroy those who have found contentment. He will allow all the people of this world to live in peace, like wild creatures, free of ambition consuming them from within. So, his heart full of compassion, he gives an entire world freedom from want.</p>
<p>All across the planet, in every nation, people stop what they are doing. They stand, or sit, or lie in place, and do not move. They do not move at all. They know, logically, that they are tired, hungry, thirsty, uncomfortable. But without desire to relieve these things, they do not care. They are puzzled, some of them, by their sudden lack of motivation. But they don't feel any need to sate their curiosity, either.</p>
<p>They stand, or sit, or lie in place.</p>
<p>Floating on the wind, Tavros surveys his handiwork, first happily, then with confusion, and finally with dawning horror. The people of this world do not want. They do not want <em>anything,</em> not even to relieve their own suffering.</p>
<p>Nothing is holding them in place. They are free. Completely free. Yet, they do not do anything. They do not move, they do not talk, they do not eat or drink. They don't want to.</p>
<p>Tavros cannot give back their want. He can not rebind what has been freed. He leaves.</p>
<p>Within days, it is a land of dust and ghosts.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Now It Hurts Less</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Nepeta Leijon</b> sometimes just gets into one of those moods. She has always been one to stop and smell the roses, so as she walks slowly through the streets, she pauses often in order to fully appreciate what is going on all around her.</p>
<p>Blood is pooling on the ground, and rivulets running in the crannies between road and sidewalk. The stench of death is thick in the air. There are moans, even some sobbing, but no screams. Why would anyone scream? The city has turned into a slaughterhouse, but that’s okay.</p>
<p>Sometimes Nepeta is just so… tired. She misses Equius so much. She is able to ignore it for such a long time, and then she begins to feel lost. She recovers, of course, immersing herself in the other quadrants, but after she recovers she always realizes again how much she misses him. Perhaps it is because she realizes how much she needs him, how much he would have helped her had he not... vanished.</p>
<p>She does not know why she feels like this. All that she knows is that, every so often, her thoughts fog and are replaced with a deep and desperate longing to see her moirail once again. She goes to sleep, to dream of Equius, but her dreams are nightmares because in the end she always wakes up.</p>
<p>Sometimes she wants to die. She thinks she could, if she tried to. And yet, whenever it occurs to her to actually do so, she just wakes up with no memory of the event. Nothing takes.</p>
<p>There have been times when Nepeta doesn't feel this way. She knows that she has not always nursed this grief, but doesn't know why. Millenia might pass before she feels it again. Then there are other times when she fights it for days, and then she wakes up, has herself a spot of breakfast, and goes for a stroll.</p>
<p>Days like today.</p>
<p>She is breaking their hearts. She is taking, then breaking, all of their hearts. In moments they go from the naïve and undeserved happiness of their lives to the deepest despair Nepeta can unearth.</p>
<p>Some shoot themselves. Others use knives. They hang themselves. They crash their cars. The most unfortunate of them, who have nothing with which to do themselves in, but who cannot bear to wait to find the means, are forced to bite and chew until they reach their own arteries.</p>
<p>Nepeta walks through the streets and takes it all in. She says to herself that they are the lucky ones, and what she gives to them is a kind of gift.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Morning After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Gamzee Makara </b>opens his eyes and blinks blearily at the light. His head is pounding, his mouth is dry, and his pupils won't dilate correctly. Everything smells like shit.</p>
<p>Must have been a hell of a night.</p>
<p>He's lying on something soft but lumpy, and wiggles his body a little to try and get more comfortable. Maybe he can sleep some more? But, no, now that he's conscious it's no good. Damn.</p>
<p>He sits upright with a low groan, fists pressed to his eyelids. He's still clutching a bottle of- of <em>something, </em>and he just now realizes he's naked as a newly pupated wiggler. He checks his sylladex. No clothes but his god-hood. It's almost entirely empty.</p>
<p>Eh, who the fuck cares. He'll dress himself later.</p>
<p>He tries to rise, but the ground is slippery, and he stumbles. He glances down at whatever it is he's sitting on.</p>
<p>Huh. It's a pile of corpses. So that's what smells so motherfucking awful.</p>
<p>He yawns and stretches, then immediately clutches his head at the wave of nausea the movement elicits. Aw, god damn motherfuck! The hell did he even <em>do</em>?</p>
<p>He slides awkwardly off the pile of semi-ripe bodies, stumbling as his feet make contact with the ground. He looks around. He's in some kinda city. Fuck, it looks like a war zone, all beat to shit. He must've been busy.</p>
<p>The god is pretty sure he started the evening at the Dark Carnival, but his tents are nowhere in sight, and he does not feel well enough to go flying looking for them. MotherFUCK it's bright.</p>
<p>So, Gamzee walks, picking idly at the dried blood under his nails. At least it's pretty quiet, save for the distant yapping of some animal. He doesn't think he'd be able to take much noise right now.</p>
<p>Sure are a lot of bodies in the streets.</p>
<p>He doesn't think they're all his fault. Pretty sure. Some of the bodies are lying near weapons, some even have them still in hand. So they must have been poppin' each other. Makes sense.</p>
<p>There's some paintings on the sides of buildings, though, and those are almost certainly his. These aliens' blood dries to this ugly clotted grey, doesn't stay vivid like troll blood does.</p>
<p>Gamzee grunts in pain and covers his eyes as he turns a corner and ends up looking right into a bright beam of sunlight. It's nothin' he can't handle normally, but motherfuck, this hangover's a bitch. This gonna last long? He hopes not.</p>
<p>There's a bunch of corpses hanging from the windows of skyscrapers like laundry, some of them pretty intact, others all cut up. He's pretty sure that's not him, he doesn't usually do the 'hang 'em up' thing. Waste of paint.</p>
<p>Still, there's plenty of motherfuckin' paint to go around now, so maybe he did.</p>
<p>Some ugly birds are pickin' at some of the corpses, screeching loudly, and Gamzee kicks at them in irritation, not having the energy to do much more.</p>
<p>Finally, he makes it back to the Carnival, where a few of his followers are having a merry cremation of the bodies they'd cleaned up. It's nearly noon, and they're the first living people he's seen all day.</p>
<p>He nods and grunts at them, then goes into his tent and flops down into his bed to sleep off the rest of his hangover. Much more comfortable than corpses, that's for sure. The fuck was he thinking, sleepin' on top of bodies? Gonna take a while to wash the smell off.</p>
<p>Even later, he couldn't remember what he did that night, not exactly. Must've had a lot of fun, though. That's for motherfucking sure.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Nine Minutes Gone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Kanaya Maryam</b> is slow to anger. Yet now, she sits at council in a war room.</p>
<p>She was not invited. She does not care.</p>
<p>“I am deeply sorry for your involvement in these affairs. This was never about you.” she says. A general stops talking. The room looks at her. They did not know that she was there. She had simply appeared.</p>
<p>Kanaya is wearing attire fitting for business of a somber nature, a sleek midnight robe and a necklace bearing her sigil. She waits until the silence has fully settled in and then continues: “You wanted to make it into the big leagues. You wanted respect. You wanted to serve your god. I did warn you—this cannot be denied, all of you must remember it—but you were caught in an argument between two gods. What were you to do?”</p>
<p>They make affirmative gestures with their bodies, not nodding heads but still with the same intended meaning. They were only being good disciples. They could not be faulted for that.</p>
<p>Every word that Kanaya speaks is swollen with understanding. “You were never expected to advance to glory. You were a throwaway gesture. A test. To see what I would do, like poking a sleeping beast. I pleaded with you, but this was taken as a sign of weakness, and the world of Topilli, which I hold dear to my heart, was subjected to further assaults and humiliations.”</p>
<p>Kanaya sighs, and then flickers, blinking out of existence for the slimmest of instants. She stands and walks to the table. The general stiffens, but Kanaya only puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You should go to your families, all of you. I am afraid that you do not have much time.”</p>
<p>The general stares at her. He is helpless, and he knows it. “What are you going to do?”</p>
<p>She shakes her head. “I have already done it. But it will be a few minutes before night falls forever and you see it for yourselves. Your world was approximately nine light-minutes from its star, so obviously the effects will not be immediate.”</p>
<p>“Was?” someone echoes in disbelief.</p>
<p>“In a few days the temperature will reach below freezing worldwide,” she says. “Temperatures will continue to decrease until they hover above absolute zero. With geothermal power you should have long enough to determine which handfuls your people will be evacuated, and equip the necessary ships.”</p>
<p>“Save us, Sylph of Space,” one of them begs. “Save us and we will serve you forever.”</p>
<p>“This was never about you,” Kanaya repeats. “A message must be sent. I will no longer tolerate Karkat’s interference in my affairs.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Nip the Bud</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Karkat Vantas</b> doesn't even need to be there.</p>
<p>The Brother from the Lower City has hair shaved almost to the skin, showing his caste as a Contemptible, and he wears neither red nor brown, but the Sigil scarified into his arm shows his loyalty. He claims to carry a message from Father Blood himself. A call to arms.</p>
<p>He mingles blood with the Eldest Fellow of the Lodge, who accepts it with only a slight shudder at the low-caste's touch, then takes out a small brown envelope. It might have been a thousand years old. It might have been written yesterday.</p>
<p>The Eldest Fellow scans the letter, eyes widening as they read the terms of damnation. The demands are high, but the bright red smeared below the words, dried near to powder yet vivid as the day it was shed, is proof enough of the note's authenticity.</p>
<p>The Eldest Fellow takes a few days to mull over the divine summons. For a few horrible, cowardly moments, they consider getting rid of it. But, no. One cannot run from living gods.</p>
<p>"Summon the Fellowers," the Eldest commands. "We march to war."</p>
<p>"Eldest?" murmurs a younger Fellow. "War on whom?"</p>
<p>"Everyone," the Eldest rasps. "Our Empire has been judged and found wanting. We are to render it to rubble."</p>
<p>The Blood Fellows are found in every nation, in every branch of government, in all caste layers of society. The benefits of Blood Pacts, of finding family and friends wherever one goes, are precious in an Empire of law and fear. It was one of the only ways for different castes to intermingle, to share. For a near-shaven Contemptible to meet the eyes of a Patrician with silken locks that kiss the floor. For Men, Women, and Freemartins to mingle without wariness. Princes and Paupers shared blood in Fellowship, at least in theory.</p>
<p>But it was still not enough. And for one god, in particular, still too reminiscent of a long-lost home.</p>
<p>The Blood Fellows rise up without mercy, the call of their Knight throbbing in their veins, too blazing to ignore.</p>
<p>Their Empire never reaches the stars.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The Petri Dish My Canvas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Feferi Piexes </b>does this a lot. Not out of malice, generally. But ecosystems are easy to unravel even by mistake and, as ecosystems go, civilizations are particularly fragile. Her attempts at making a race of sentient sponges ended in their self-destruction. The viral-scale intelligence wiped out a few space-faring races. The silicone empire had been promising, but then they overhauled their planet's atmosphere and drove a few other local systems into an extinction spiral.</p>
<p>But you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and to make the perfect primordial soup you need to break quite a few.</p>
<p>This world is perfect for Feferi's newest creation. It has precisely the correct mix of climate and geography to grow her newest selection of sentient brain parasites. There are a nice array of ancestor organisms to work from, a well- insulated troposphere, and adequate resources for a new sophont to emerge. The only problem is that another civilization had developed there already, but that is easily fixed.</p>
<p>Her plague sweeps through the population with elegant efficiency. Airborne, resistant to antibiotics, and with a nice long incubation period followed by a fatal bloom through the circulatory system. Already, the last of them have left their cities, the dense population centers serving only to spread the plague faster. It takes some time for the last remnants to succumb, but that's fine. When you deal in Life, you can't expect precision.</p>
<p>Most of Feferi's work has already been done by her pathogen children, so she only will have to pick off a few thousand of the unwanted sophonts on her own. It's easy. A few mutations here and there, and the species will be extinct in the blink of a goddess' eye.</p>
<p>Feferi stretches her arms, cracks her knuckles, and starts in. Weeding can be so relaxing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter was actually written long before current global events transpired. Apologies for that.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Sudoku for Gods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Terezi Pyrope</b> takes her time. She is sitting at the table of what most humans would recognize as an outdoor café. The Errflirri are not too unlike trolls in appearance, so with a bit of makeup and a hood she fits right in with the crowd.</p>
<p>She has destroyed worlds with her bare hands before. She is done with that. It's boring, and in a universe of such magnificent size it is next to useless for cutting down on the sheer and unrelenting wall of mental noise which assaults her senses every day.</p>
<p>Instead she is sitting at a table, working on a newspaper <em>sinrin </em>puzzle and enjoying the morning’s fifth cup of a local brew. It isn’t coffee, but it may as well be called that. The connotations are roughly equivalent.</p>
<p>People pass by—on their way to work, to recreation, to love monasteries, to the academy. She speaks with them on occasion. Other times she intercedes in less obvious ways, by throwing a crumpled-up puzzle sheet into the street or asking for a refill on her drink at just the right time. Or she does nothing at all, but in a very deliberate way.</p>
<p>Terezi likes to play games. Her favorite one is where she tries to achieve the maximum possible effect with the least possible effort. She handicaps herself. She says things, or does things, and counts on her understanding of the minds around her to allow her to calculate what small interventions will snowball into the greatest of consequences.</p>
<p>Sometimes she builds civilizations, rises great kings and creates paradises. It is all the same to her. The game is the thing. The <em>puzzle </em>that it presents her.</p>
<p>The Errflirr day is twenty-nine Earth hours long. This is her routine for twenty thousand, four hundred and six of those days. She only takes a break when the cafe closes. She completes three hundred and six thousand and ninety-five <em>sinrin </em>puzzle sheets in this time.</p>
<p>She remembers every one.</p>
<p>Before Terezi leaves she takes a minute to add the last touch to this final puzzle, and then she folds it neatly into a paper animal that no human has ever seen, nor ever will.</p>
<p>In the distance, a mushroom cloud rises above the city spires. It is the first. It will not be the last.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For those of you playing along at home, TZ spent 67.5 Earth years at this café.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Price of Knowledge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Late by a day, sorry. Hopefully it's worth the wait.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Sollux Captor</b> does not mean it personally. It's just business. Part of a bigger plan.</p>
<p>He watches as the data streams across his dual screens, his left hand fidgeting absently with a spinning toy. Great little inventions, these things. Perfect for his manic moods.</p>
<p>Sollux is, at his heart, an engineer. He takes information and applies it. And, as Mage of Doom, the one who knows the limits of all creation, he has more information than he could ever use. He still wants more<em>.</em></p>
<p>There are secrets, in this universe of theirs. Some of them, only he knows. He is the only one to know about the afterlife, for example. Feferi knows it exists, of course, and Terezi knows second-hand, but only Sollux knows its details so intimately. Only he sees the dead godlings. Only he sees the squirming masses of horrorterrors. Only he sees the Cherubic Lord, and knows what awaits on the other side of oblivion.</p>
<p>Sollux gives the spinning toy another flick. The Cherubic Lord is key. In <em>his</em> universe, Cherubs are mostly just pests, blasting planets to smithereens or defending them so ferociously that it becomes frustratingly difficult to get anything done there. Sollux is certain that Cherubs are not meant to play the Game. Yet it is apparently possible, somewhere and somehow.</p>
<p>There are universes beyond number, somewhere beyond the Furthest Ring, like lilypads floating through an infinite pond. There are worlds and worlds about which he knows <em>nothing.</em> This limitation to his knowledge consumes his thoughts. Could these worlds be seen? Understood? Travelled to? <em>Altered? </em>If only he were more powerful!</p>
<p>Sollux puts the fidget spinner down to type a few commands into his console. This orbiting station has no windows to the outside vacuum, but that suits Sollux just fine. Remote-sensing devices of every kind are focused on the planet below, and several others are observing his onboard apiary. The bees in this station are not making the psychoactive happy honey that he occasionally supplies to the other gods or imbibes himself when he is forced to socialize. They're an older strain, painstakingly revived from his old sylladex using Game-tech and his own inventions. They make mind honey.</p>
<p>With increased age comes increased psionics. Better power, better control. Sollux is ancient beyond any psion of his homeworld, and has no need for enhanced mortal powers. What he <em>needs</em> is a honey that will enhance his <em>divine</em> power, that will help him know the limits not just of this universe, but of others. And figure out how to do that, he needs more computing power.</p>
<p>What is the limit to the performance of mind honey? That's easy, he knows the answer to that before his mind has finished forming the question. How to get there? Not so much.</p>
<p>The dominant culture of the little blue-and-purple planet spinning below was personally chosen and built up from scratch by Sollux for this purpose. They are crafting an AI, under their god's direction, though filtered through plenty of obfuscating middle-dealers. The purpose of the AI is to optimize the performance of mind honey for divine purposes, in model systems. There is no other way to do it. He can't test it on himself. Not in beta. He needs to know it's perfect, before he ingests any of it. He knows his limits, and he knows he's willing to die for this. He will not let himself die.</p>
<p>He could test it on his fellow gods, but he well remembers the effects of normal mind honey on mortal psionics. If mortal honey could fry a mortal's brain, could divine honey fry one's divinity? It's too dangerous to test and iterate in meat-space. Simulating the effects is the clear answer.</p>
<p>They're almost done. It's so close; he can feel the end of the project draw near.</p>
<p>The AI is complete. It is opening up realms of possibility, and he can feel the limits being redrawn. Sollux picks up the fidget spinner again.</p>
<p>He watches from a thousand electronic eyes and ears as, over the next few days and at an accelerating rate, the AI converts the entire planet, and everything on it, into data servers, as well as power stations and other infrastructure.</p>
<p>That's fine. That's expected. He's gotten this outcome before, though not with an entire planet, a planet that trusts him so completely that they've put no safeguards in place to stop the AI.</p>
<p>Again, fine, that's the point. What is the <em>result?</em></p>
<p>Nothing. There is no way to optimize bees for this, so far as the AI is capable of calculating. The knowledge of this computational limit hits Sollux right between the eyes, even before the AI has reached it.</p>
<p>He could throw more material at it. There are more planets in this system. He could throw a star at it. He does both.</p>
<p>Nothing, nothing, nothing. There is no way to turn mind honey into holy honey. Not how he wants, not within this universe's set of natural laws.</p>
<p>Not without Game tech.</p>
<p>Sollux blasts his way out of the ship, then incinerates the ball of grey goo that used to be a solar system before the AI can come up with a defense against his psionics. He doesn't need it anymore. It was useless for its intended purpose, but Sollux is still pleased by his results.</p>
<p>After all, now he has a path forward.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Devil Went Down to Xerplex</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Vriska Serket </b>means it very, very personally.</p>
<p>A man stands at a country crossroads in the dark, watching his pocket-clock by the weak flame of the oil lamp. One minute now.</p>
<p>He glances up at the sky. A good, clear, warm night. The moons are bright pale, two of them near full, the last a mere crescent. The light is cold.</p>
<p>The clock! Thirty seconds. Don't look away, it's almost time...</p>
<p>He feels lightheaded. He is holding his breath.</p>
<p>Ten seconds... five seconds...</p>
<p>"Vriska Serket," he says, aloud. "Vriska Serket, I would like to make a bet with you."</p>
<p>Right on cue, the Goddess appears in eerie silence. Gray skin and sleek black clothes, embellished in silver and gold. The bright, unnatural orange of her horns, the translucent blue of her wings. If the man is surprised that his summons worked, he does not show it.</p>
<p>"Do you?" she breathes. "A bet? Are you <span class="vriska">sure</span>?"</p>
<p>He does not flinch at her Tinge. "Yes, my Lady Luck. A contest of weaving, traditional to my people."</p>
<p>Her laugh is like the ring of struck metal, gold maybe, against tempered steel. "Alright then, bucko! For what stakes?"</p>
<p>The man smiles and looks away. "I am not particularly wealthy. But my family owns the mineral rights to an unplumbed mountainside full of veins of precious metals and precious stones." The man takes out a map, and outlines the location of his mineral holdings. "I will bet all of it, with the provision that you take nothing that is not mine. But in turn, if I win, I want you to make me the richest man in the world."</p>
<p>"Deal," smirks the goddess. "Tell me the rules of this contest."</p>
<p>"We call it 'The God's Eye,' Lady. A pattern woven around intersecting sticks." He explains the rules to Vriska's satisfaction, and they begin.</p>
<p>The man is clearly a skilled weaver, his hands steady and sure, but his fingers seem to slip and slide on the sticks, and his yarn tangles and frays. Vriska barely looks at her sticks, yet her strands are sleek and even, her colors harmonious and sure. She weaves eight layers before her challenger completes his fourth, and, watching him struggle, magnanimously asks him if he forfeits.</p>
<p>Face discolored with apparent shame, he nods, but to his credit he does not beg for his family inheritance back. At least he knows better than that.</p>
<p>The goddess goes to her prize, a mountain covered with grassy pastures and holding great riches below. She hires a team to excavate away the land above the ore veins, ignoring the protests from local shepherds. She has no need for this wealth, no desire for it, even, but to let her winnings go unclaimed would make her seem <em>weak.</em></p>
<p>But she is not even a week into the excavation when she hears him, the man who summoned her to gamble his land away, calling her from a nearby town. She ignores him at first, supposing that he's begging for a rematch, but then, out of the stream of prayers in her mind, hears something about <em>breaking the deal.</em></p>
<p>The man, when she visits him in the town square, does not look angry. Quite to the contrary, he seems quite smug, if she's reading his species' expressions correctly.</p>
<p>"You took what is not yours, my Lady Luck."</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"You broke our agreement. You cheated me." He's grinning broadly now, no mistaking it. "I owned the mineral rights, not the rights to the land above the minerals. I will forgive your transgression, however. Simply grant me what is mine, by virtue of your breach of contract.""</p>
<p>"<span class="vriska">Wh8t??</span>"</p>
<p>Vriska stares at the mortal who had swindled her, who, with no hope of winning, had bested her by losing. Vriska had always admired gutsiness, had favored those mortals who would stand up to her. But still, gambling is within her domain, and her house makes the rules.</p>
<p>"To be the richest man in the world," she says slowly. "That is what you want."</p>
<p>The mortal looks eager, and Vriska's face slowly splits into a grin. "Very well, then."</p>
<p>It's all over in minutes. She doesn't care to control the exactitudes at this point, but if she had to guess, she'd suppose that most of the population of that planet died of stroke.</p>
<p>The man who summoned her, she spares. And as he stands there, frozen in horror as people drop dead around him, she approaches, hips swaying. She puts a hand on his shoulder and whispers into his ear:</p>
<p>"All the riches in the world are yours."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. To Join the Great Majority</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Aradia Megido </b>has enough time for everyone. Everyone knows her, or will know her soon enough, for the Maid of Time appears to every being at the moment of their death. But tonight, she is arriving early.</p>
<p>A mother in her bunker rocks her mewling infant. It is quiet tonight, almost peaceful. No gunfire in the tunnels, no desperate banging on the doors. But the mother is unhappy, stress lines on her face and empty sadness in her eyes.</p>
<p>There is no food tonight.</p>
<p>"Hush," she says. "Wait until morning, he will be back. Papa will be back tomorrow."</p>
<p>Papa has not returned for four days.</p>
<p>"Just wait, hush, sleep now."</p>
<p>She is thin, near emaciated. The infant is not much better.</p>
<p>"Please."</p>
<p>Finally, the infant grows quiet. The mother sighs, places her infant in its cradle, and turns to look at the clock on the wall. She is hungry. It will be a long night.</p>
<p>The clock, she realizes after several long seconds, has stopped. The battery is out. They don't have any more batteries. If she wants more, she will have to leave the bunker, and who knows what waits out in the tunnels? Scavengers, armed gangs, or the tumor-ridden sick who brave the surface, each of them more dangerous than the last.</p>
<p>But it's not the battery. It's the Clockwork Witch, the Maid of Time, smiling serenely at her from the doorway. "<span class="aradia">it is 0ver.</span>"</p>
<p>In some cultures, Death wields a sword, in others, a scythe, or an axe. Today, she holds a pistol, and the dull shine of its steel seems strange, out of place.</p>
<p>The mother is breathless. She would have expected more warning. "My child," she says, voice hoarse.</p>
<p>"<span class="aradia">the child is already g0ne. their suffering is 0ver."</span></p>
<p>The sound that comes from the mother's mouth is not a sob, for her species does not cry, but it is equivalent. "How? Why? Please, you can take me, but leave my child!"</p>
<p>The Maid's eyes are closed to the living, but to the doomed she opens them, and she opens them to the mother. They are cold, but soft and red, like freshly-bloodstained snow. "<span class="aradia">y0ur generati0n is the last 0n this w0rld. y0ur sun gr0ws ever h0tter, ever redder. the seas will n0t return, and y0ur w0rld will n0t bl00m again. the time has passed f0r y0ur pe0ple. it is kinder f0r y0ur child t0 die n0w, in their sleep, dreaming 0f the mem0ry 0f y0ur arms, than t0 sicken and starve in the c0ming weeks.</span>"</p>
<p>The mother looks back to her child. Their chest does not seem to rise or fall, but they are simply frozen in time, like the rest of the world. They are alive. Her child is <em>alive. </em>She cannot accept this fate for them.</p>
<p>So, she fights it. She argues, she bargains, she begs, she threatens. It is a long time before she gives up, but she cannot last forever, and the Maid of Time's patience is infinite.</p>
<p>Death, in the end, comes for everyone. And so she came for the mother and her child both, and every other living being on that scorched, dying world. The Maid will arrive and has arrived to this world many times, once for each person, and divided the world into countless frozen fragments.</p>
<p><em>It is kind, to kill them this way,</em> thinks Aradia. <em>To die quickly, without pain, and all at once, with no one left to mourn? Such oblivion should be the desire of every sentient creature, far better than any afterlife we could possibly provide.</em></p>
<p>Aradia does not mind this work. The end of a person, each and every one, is a unique and precious thing, a holy thing to be treasured. Mortals truly are like snowflakes, delicate, falling cold and silent towards death through the fabric of time. The sheer quantity of snow is irrelevant. She will not miss any of them. She will catch each one, appreciate it, and then let it melt away.</p>
<p>Her work done for now, Aradia flies to a nearby moon, where another her, a younger her, is waiting. She hands off the gun, and her younger self carefully cleans and reloads it.</p>
<p>Not even a second has passed, but it time for her next appointment.</p>
<p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Oceans of Lethe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Equius Zahaak</b> is gone. His breath is vacuum, his blood is nothing. What he creates comes from nowhere; whom he speaks to forgets. That what he changes always was. Those which he destroys never were.</p><p>(Sometimes, a whole world goes away, and nobody notices at all.)</p>
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